High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) has emerged as a precise, non-surgical, minimally-invasive treatment for benign and malignant tumors. At focal intensities (1,000-10,000 W/cm2) that are 4-5 orders of magnitude greater than that of diagnostic ultrasound (approximately 0.1 W/cm2), HIFU can be applied transcutaneously to induce lesions (i.e., localized tissue necrosis) at a small, well defined region (approximately 1 mm) deep within tissue, while leaving intervening tissue between the HIFU transducer and the focal point essentially unharmed. Tissue necrosis is a result of tissue at the focal point of the HIFU beam being heated to over 70° C. in a very short period of time (generally less than one second). Tissue necrosis also results from cavitation activity, which causes tissue and cellular disorganization. HIFU is currently being used clinically for the treatment of prostate cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia, as well as the treatment of malignant bone tumors and soft tissue sarcomas. Clinical trials are currently being conducted for HIFU treatment of breast fibroadenomas, and various stage-4 primary and metastatic cancerous tumors of the kidney and liver.
Therapeutic uses of HIFU have generally been directed at destroying undesired masses of tissue by directly targeting the tissue itself. However, the focal region of a HIFU transducer is relatively small (approximately the size of a grain of rice). Thus, to treat the entire volume of even a relatively small tumor with HIFU to necrose the tumorous tissue requires constantly changing the position of the focal region of the HIFU transducer relative to the tumor, leading to relatively long treatment times, and requiring relatively complicated targeting systems. It would be desirable to provide a technique for utilizing HIFU's ability to non-invasively destroy undesired tissue, such as a tumor, without requiring treatment of the entire volume of the undesired tissue.